


Stories We Become

by necronism



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: I guess this deserves a ship tag?, This is what I get for plotting with my friends it seems.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 07:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17658962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necronism/pseuds/necronism
Summary: A very, very (stress, very) short alternative ending to the epilogue. Many things heavily implied.





	Stories We Become

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MellowJam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellowJam/gifts).



The gunshot rang out over the mountain tops, tapering off into the cold air, so thin it nearly hurt to breathe right now. Having been up here for weeks on end, months, maybe some men adjusted to it. Dutch always found it rather dizzying now, in what he assumed was he waning youthful years. He had felt the kick of the gun and hadn't even blinked, only watched Micah reach to his chest and laugh hollowly.  _You shot me._ John was quick to intervene, barely taking in a breath before he unloaded the clip of his revolver into Micah Bell. The man then turned, before falling to his knees and facefirst in the snow. It was done. Was further explanation was owed now as he glanced to John Marston, briefly, from the corner of his eyes.

"Thank you, I—"

Dutch looked away, holstering his guns.

_It was over._

Four years of knowing the truth but never having the nerve to confess it to himself. Hearing it from John after so long, after the dust had settled - well, he had never properly mourned for them anyway. Not many problems came back to bite you in the ass when they're six feet underground. John knew to bite his tongue now, waiting for a moment that Dutch wouldn't give. _It was goddamn over_ , and now he - he didn't feel lighter, didn't feel redeemed. Guilt had settled in to his every day functions years ago, the second he stepped away from the man he loved on the mountain. The storm whipping them, the same one that had blew everything up into a panic for him in the first place. A different sort of storm. The guns felt heavy at his hips as the fur coat fell over them. His expression relaxed as he took his first step forward, past John Marston, past the corpse of Micah Bell, and past Sadie Adler, who struggled to properly sit up.

"He's alive, Dutch," John belted out, voice pitching and breaking.

Dutch stopped, hesitating as he was frozen.

"Arthur. He's alive."

Dutch searched for his own answers along the skyline. Finding nothing, he tilted his head, casting his gaze downward to the snow. Stranger things had happened, but he wasn't sure if he was - what was he? Afraid, riding out another wave of guilt? It could be fear. For the first time.

These words were all that flooded his mind as he walked down the mountain, gathering from Micah Bell's men along the way. The money was useless to him now and, in the end, there had never really been a plan. So much of the money from Blackwater had gone towards these supplies in the first place, or left untouched thanks to Dutch's firm hand on it. _What of Beaver Hollow? What of that camp, the caravans left behind after all these years? What of that night that plagued his darkest of nightmares?_ The thunder cracking, lightning opening up the sky to reveal the forlorn, broken eyes of Arthur Morgan as he turned away to... leave him to a demise unseen.

Maybe that had been his first mistake.

 

**Three goddamn years.**

Three long, quiet, goddamn years, spent on the verge of the forest treeline, the outskirts of Strawberry, living as a member of a adjunct society. It was all changing before his eyes. He never had a handle on any of it anyway. Societal and civilization's evolution was uncanny that way, unpredictable as it was rapid. His own work, a small cabin in the woods, was a job left for himself now.

If only anyone could have seen him then, working the forest around him, being civilized enough to hire the help of a few timber hands. It was built in a few months, furniture moved in with only the relationships he had apparently forged. Looking like the restless, older man he was beginning to evolve into, the permanent citizens of Strawberry must have taken pity of his situation at the time.

That had been almost two years ago. The time that followed was waiting every morning, every evening, for that inevitable end to his story. John, Sadie, Charlies - they had all found Micah just how they were meant to, a fitting end to a tragic tale. Dutch van der Linde had gotten away and - _**why?**_

Because he wasn't a _part_ of their chapter?

He knew who would eventually come knocking on that door, or kicking it in. He knew what face he might see last, whose eyes would be watching the life bleed from his own.

He knew, and he waited.

He feared.

But he also... hoped.


End file.
